- So there's quite a few number of angles you could take,
and I would personally recommend taking several angles.
And in no,
like, order of importance, I'll just list some
of them randomly here, but,
you know, I would call together some of the top science
and just kinda like, you don't have to go into the science,
but just share some links, or some papers, or an email
with some PDFs or something
where they can review the science showing
how efficacious mindfulness and especially prolonged
or sustained mindfulness practice
can support large organizations.
'Cause ultimately, you know,
these types of decision makers usually want evidence
that this is going to influence the organization,
not just like the happiness of people who choose to do it,
'cause then they're gonna say, well,
just go to a yoga studio, just go download an app.
But there is, you know, more and more evidence and research
showing the efficacy of mindfulness in organizations.
So I would kind of pinpoint that, you know,
there's a direct relationship between mindfulness training
and the bottom line, or employee retention, or, you know,
people come to work more because they're healthier
or they're more inspired,
HR reports a decrease in x and an increase in y.
But really kind of pinpoint that type of evidence
that other organizations are doing the research on.
I would also propose saying,
look, we don't know how it's gonna go.
You know, we're not saying this will work wonders,
but what we can do is test.
And say, look, if we roll out some sort of program,
we will be testing this.
We will be providing evidence to you over time to show
what it's actually doing.
We're gonna be tracking this.
So pre-program, or pre-workshop, or pre-meditation session,
we will be asking for quantitative and qualitative info.
After session one, or two, or three
we're gonna be asking for more info.
And so we will be tracking
what is happening, and how we can improve,
and what is working, what isn't working.
So for this type of person that goes a long way.
So to not oversell it by saying,
this is gonna be amazing, but say, look,
we have reason to believe that this will work in many areas
and we will test it along the way.
And you know, if it doesn't work, we'll scrap it.
And we believe that it's worth the investment to try it.
So that's another thing,
typically, with this kind of conversation,
I will do my best beforehand to know
what's important to this person.
So in other words, what are their goals?
What are their challenges?
Like, what do they care about?
So and usually for this level of senior administrator,
you can usually look to see
what the organization's mission is,
what their values are, the value statements,
and kind of pull from the formal statements
about who we are.
This is why we do it.
This is what we do.
And connect mindfulness to that.
Like, look, mindfulness will help,
or it will support us to live out our mission, our values,
our responsibilities, more than we have.
So making a direct connection between mindfulness
and the sort of explicit intentions of the organization,
but then also like, okay, so I know what's important
to this person, they usually talk about x,
so how can I connect mindfulness to x?
But both in terms of what they want
and what they don't want.
Like, what do they spend their time repairing?
What are their, you know,
what do they not want to see?
And how can mindfulness support that?
But to make it very explicit.
And if you don't know what's important to them,
and I'm just speaking to everyone in general,
if you don't know what's important to the person
or the organization, then ask.
And then if you need time to make the connection
between mindfulness and their answer, that's fine,
but make it relevant is my overarching point here.
So that's another thing.